Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  ‘I’m the same. Take a pill.’

  ‘Don’t want to.’

  ‘Then it’s your own fault. See you later.’

  After the call he no longer felt able to think in categories of Confucian interior design. Everything around him seemed to have lost its meaning, he could imagine any arrangement of furniture and none. A glass wall had appeared between him and the objects, harmony and normality became purely academic categories, as if a blind man were talking about colours. He turned off the television and found his jaws stretching into an endless, leonine yawn. According to Schopenhauer, the hero of his youth: Yawning is one of the reflex movements. I suspect that its more distant cause may be a momentary depotentiation of the brain caused by boredom, mental slackness or somnolence.

  Was he bored? Was his brain growing slack? Was he depotentiated? Not at all. He was unsettlingly wide awake. He lay down fully dressed on the couch, turned out the light and tentatively closed his eyes. Perhaps if he avoided official actions like getting undressed or going to bed, he might trick his body and mind, which seemed to think that they had to resist sleep the more clearly he attempted to achieve it.

  Half an hour later he knew better.

  It wasn’t over. Hydra still held him in its embrace, its poison would rage in him until he had finally understood its nature. He couldn’t pretend that none of it concerned him any longer just because no one was trying to kill him. You couldn’t decide on normality; things didn’t come to an end just because you’d buried them in the past. The nightmare continued.

  Who was Hydra?

  He turned the lights back on. Yoyo was right. They’d found out a hell of a lot of things, they’d thwarted the plans of the conspirators, they had good reason to be proud. At the same time he felt as if they’d been looking through the wrong end of a telescope all along. The closest things had drifted into the distance, into supposed insignificance, but in fact all you had to do was turn the telescope around and the truth would move into the foreground. He opened a bottle of Shiraz, poured himself a glass and systematically crossed all previous suspects off the list: Beijing, Zheng Pang-Wang, the CIA. On closer inspection all of these trails had turned in a circle, but there might have been one that he hadn’t properly understood, one that carried straight on.

  The Greenwatch massacre.

  The complete leadership of the environmental broadcaster, all wiped out. Why? No one was able to say what Greenwatch had been working on most recently, even though there were several suggestions that there had been a report on environmental damage by oil companies. Loreena’s ambition to clear up the Calgary attack had finally focused attention on the film that supposedly showed Gerald Palstein’s attacker. But given how quickly these pictures had spread, the massacre could hardly have taken place in order to prevent their further dissemination.

  He had Diane play through the film sequence once more. Towards the end, as the camera swung round towards the stage, you could see that the square was full of people with mobile phones, and surrounded by television crews. A miracle, in fact, that Xin hadn’t been captured more often, fat suit and all, at any rate Hydra should have predicted that and factored it in, but equally that might have been the first error of reasoning.

  Perhaps they’d been banking on it!

  The longer Jericho thought about the sequence, the more Xin’s weird disguise and his stately way of creeping around seemed to be part of an act designed to present investigators with an Asian assassin just in case he was caught on camera – just as Zheng’s visible presence in Equatorial Guinea had left an elephant track in the Middle Kingdom. There was a glimpse of Lars Gudmundsson with his double game; Palstein was still alive by happy chance, leaving the way open for Carl Hanna; Loreena Keowa got to the bottom of that, costing ten people their lives and Greenwatch its memory.

  Did that make sense? Not really.

  Unless she’d found out things at Greenwatch that really put the pressure on Hydra.

  Loreena had travelled in from Calgary. Possibly in possession of explosive information. She had immediately gone to the editorial conference, a meeting that Hydra had been able to prevent at the last minute, although this meant that the conspirators still didn’t know how much of the unwelcome research was already stored on the channel’s hard drives, because Loreena might have sent emails in the run-up!

  That was it.

  Jericho got to work. While it was approaching midnight in Shanghai, the noonday sun was shining on the other side of the Pacific. He had Diane draw up a list of all the relevant internet service providers and started phoning them, one after the other, always on the same pretext: he was calling on behalf of Loreena, because it was impossible to send or receive emails from her web address, and would they please be so kind as to take a look and see why that wasn’t working. Eleven times he was told that no Loreena Keowa was stored as a customer, three of the people he spoke to knew Loreena from the net, had learned of her death and expressed their dismay, for which Jericho thanked them in his best funeral-director voice. He only struck gold with the twelfth call. He was asked to give a password, which meant that she was registered there. Jericho promised to call back. Then he hacked his way into the provider’s system and put Diane to decoding Loreena’s password. Every data transfer had been recorded, so that within a few minutes he received information about Loreena’s mail provider. He rang back, gave the password, and asked if any emails sent over the last fourteen days were still stored in the system. They were stored for up to six weeks, he was told, and which ones did he wish to see?

  All of them, he said.

  Half an hour later he had viewed all the documents concerning the environmental scandal, which, under the title Trash of the Titans, had been supposed to form the core of that broadcast. It named a lot of names, but Jericho didn’t believe in a connection for a second. The massacre had occurred as a reaction to the last email sent. It contained the answers to all the questions.

  Hydra’s identity.

  Gerald Palstein

  Director, Strategic Management, EMCO (USA), victim of an assassination attempt in Calgary on 21.4.2025, probable aim to prevent him from flying to the Moon (there are data on Palstein).

  Assassin Asian, possibly Chinese.

  (Chinese interests in EMCO? Oil-sand business?)

  Alejandro Ruiz

  Strategy manager (since July 2022) of Repsol YPF (Spanish-Argentinian). Nickname Ruiz El Verde, married, two children, conventional lifestyle, debt-free.

  Disappeared in Lima, 2022, during an inspection tour (crime?). Previously several days at conference in Beijing, incl. joint venture with Sinopec. Last meeting outside of Beijing on 1.9.2022: subject and participants unknown (Repsol wants to look through documents, I’m waiting to be called back). 2.9. flew on to Lima, phone calls to his wife. Ruiz depressed and anxious. Cause probably previous day’s meeting.

  Common factors Palstein, Ruiz:

  Both men have tried to expand their companies’ areas of business in new directions, e.g. solar power, Orley Enterprises. Ethical standpoints. Against oil-sand mining. Opponents in their own camp.

  Appointed strategy managers when the threatened bankruptcy of their companies leaves them with hardly any room to negotiate.

  However: hardly any points of contact between EMCO and Repsol. According to Palstein, no personal contact between him and Ruiz.

  Lars Gudmundsson

  Palstein’s bodyguard, freelance operative for Texan security company Eagle Eye.

  Career: Navy Seal, sniper training, moved to Africa to join Mamba private army, from there to APS (African Protection Services), possible involvement in coup d’état in West Africa, since 2000 back in the USA.

  Playing false game: with his people, ensured that Palstein’s attacker was able to enter the building opposite Imperial Oil unimpeded (have informed Palstein of Gudmundsson’s betrayal and asked Eagle Eye about G. G. and his team have since gone missing).

  Gudmundsson—

  The name spa
rked something in Jericho’s mind. Following an intuition, he took out Vogelaar’s dossier again, and there it was: Lars Gudmundsson had belonged to the special unit that had brought Mayé to power – along with Neil Gabriel, aka Carl Hanna. They both seemed to have got on particularly well with Kenny Xin, so well, in fact, that they had worked for him in various ways and finally quit APS. Loreena’s email also included the film from the crime scene, a direct line to Repsol and the private number of the presumably widowed Señora Ruiz. He had Diane assemble further facts about the Spaniard, but didn’t come up with much more than the journalist had already put together. In film sequences and pictures the man looked sympathetic, positive and energetic.

  But after the meeting in Beijing he’d been worried.

  And then he’d disappeared.

  Why had that sudden change occurred? Because he’d experienced or learned something at the meeting that stressed him? Right, but more likely because he could no longer be sure of his life. If Alejandro Ruiz had actually fallen victim to a crime, it was because someone had wanted to keep the contents of that meeting from becoming public.

  Had Hydra killed Ruiz because he knew about Operation Mountains of Eternal Light? But in that case how was Palstein involved? Loreena found striking factors in common between the two. Might Palstein have been informed about Hydra’s plans?

  Jericho took a sip of Shiraz.

  Nonsense. These were ludicrous hypotheses. Ruiz had disappeared immediately after the meeting. Before he could open his mouth. Why would they have given Pal-stein three years to bring his knowledge to the people? Calgary had clearly served the purpose of slipping an agent into Orley’s tour group, and also Palstein was alive, even if it was only by chance. Since then there had been no more attempts on his life, even though opportunities had arisen. Gudmundsson, for example, constantly near him for professional reasons, could have killed him with a close-range bullet at any time.

  And why hadn’t he done it?

  And why hadn’t he done it before? Before Calgary?

  Hydra had managed to infiltrate Palstein’s inner circle, his security men. Why go to all that effort? A public event. Agents distracting the police. Kenny Xin, firing from an empty building? Why so laborious?

  Because it was supposed to look like something that it wasn’t.

  No doubt about it: the connection between Lima and Calgary, between Ruiz and Palstein, existed. Loreena’s research led directly to Hydra, otherwise the butchers of Vancouver wouldn’t have murdered ten people and got rid of their computers. So what had really happened on 21 April in Canada?

  The meeting in Beijing provided the key.

  He was about to phone Repsol in Madrid when the doorbell rang. Startled, he looked at his watch. Twenty past one. Drunks? The bell rang again. For a moment he toyed with the idea of ignoring it, then he went to the intercom and looked at the screen.

  Yoyo.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked in a puzzled voice.

  ‘How about you press the button?’ she snapped at him. ‘Or do I have to announce my visits in writing first?’

  ‘It’s not exactly the time of day when you expect visitors,’ he said as she stepped into his loft, her motorbike helmet under her arm. Yoyo shrugged. She set the helmet down on the central kitchen counter, ambled into the living area and glanced curiously around in all directions. He followed her.

  ‘Pretty.’

  ‘Not quite finished.’

  ‘Still.’ She pointed at the open bottle of Shiraz. ‘Is there another glass?’

  Jericho scratched himself irritably behind the ear as she slipped out of her leather jacket and threw herself on his sofa.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Wait.’

  He looked across to her and brought out a second glass. In the gloom of the lounge a reddish glimmer indicated that she had lit a cigarette. After he had filled her glass, they sat there for a few minutes, drinking in silence, and Yoyo sent smoke signals issuing from the corners of her mouth, encoded explanations for her presence. She stared into the void. From time to time the heavy curtains of her eyelashes seemed to want to wipe away what they had seen, but whenever she looked up her gaze was as lost as before. More than ever she reminded him of the girl in the video film that Chen Hongbing had shown him a week and a half before.

  A week and a half?

  It could just as easily have been a year.

  ‘And what are you up to at the moment?’ she asked, glancing at Diane.

  ‘Wondering what’s brought you here.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to go to bed? Get some sleep at last?’

  ‘I’ve tried.’

  She nodded. ‘Me too. I thought it would be easier.’

  ‘Sleeping?’

  ‘Carrying on from where you’ve left off. But it’s like reaching into the void. A lot of things no longer exist. The control centre at the steelworks. The Guardians. And I’ve seen Grand Cherokee’s room with all his stuff in it, as if he were about to come back. Spooky. On the other hand, college is college. The same professors, the same lecture theatres. The same administration that makes sure you don’t start thinking too independently. The same chicken coop, the same battles and trivia. I listen to music, I go out, watch television, remind myself that everyone else is even worse off than me, that I could be dead, and that the banality of everyday life has its good side. I try to convince myself that I should be feeling relieved.’

  Jericho crossed his legs. He sat in silence on the floor in front of her, his back resting against a chair.

  ‘And then the thing I’ve been waiting for all my life happens. Hongbing takes me in his arms, tells me how much he loves me and showers me with tragedies. The whole terrible story. And I know I should be letting off fireworks for this moment, I should die of pity, go mad with joy, throw my arms around his neck, the bastards have no power over us now, it’s all going to be okay, we can talk to each other at last, we’re a family! Instead’ – she blew smoke-snakes in the air – ‘my head feels like a chest of a thousand drawers, everyone stuffs whatever he feels like into it, and now my father’s joining in! I think, Yoyo, you miserable little cripple, why don’t you feel anything? Come on, now, you’ve got to feel something, after all, you wished—’ She reached for her glass, downed the contents and sucked the remaining life from her cigarette. ‘You so wished he would talk to you! Even when Kenny held his bloody gun to my head, I thought, no! I don’t want to die without finding out what threw his life so far off the rails. But now I know, I just feel … full.’

  Jericho turned his glass around in his hand.

  ‘And at the same time hollowed out,’ she went on. ‘That’s crazy, isn’t it? Nothing moves me! As if this isn’t the world as I used to know it, but a mere copy of it. Everything looks as if it’s made of cardboard.’

  ‘And you think it’ll never be normal again.’

  ‘It scares me, Owen. Maybe everything’s all right with the world, and I’m the copy. Maybe the real Yoyo was shot by Xin after all.’

  Jericho stared at his feet.

  ‘In a sense she was.’

  ‘Xin stole something that night.’ She looked at him. ‘Took something. Took me away. I can no longer feel what I should be feeling. I’m no longer able to give my father the respect I should. Not even to burst dramatically into floods of tears.’

  ‘Because it isn’t over yet.’

  ‘I want it back. I want to be me again.’

  She lit another cigarette. Again they were silent for a while, lost in smoke and thoughts.

  ‘We haven’t yet woken up, Yoyo.’ He threw his head back and looked at the ceiling. ‘That’s our problem. For three days I’ve been trying to tell myself that I don’t want to have anything more to do with Hydra. Or with Xin and all the freaks that frolic in my head when everyone else is asleep. I furnish my life with knick-knacks, I try and make it look as normal and unspectacular as possible, but it feels wrong. As if I’d ended up on a stage—’

  ‘Yes, exactly!
’

  ‘And a little while ago, after we spoke on the phone, I understood. We’re still trapped in this nightmare, Yoyo. It pretends we’re awake, but we aren’t. We’re watching an illusion. It’s far from over.’ He sighed. ‘I’m actually obsessed by Hydra! I have to go on working on this case. Clearing out the cellar in which I’ve been burying people alive for years. Hydra is turning into the model of my life and the question of how it’s going to go on from here. I have to face up to these ghosts to get rid of them, even if it costs me my courage or my reason. I can’t, won’t, go on like this. I can’t bear living like this, do you understand? I want to wake up at last.’

  Otherwise we will be trapped for ever in an imaginary world, he thought. Then we won’t be proper people, we’ll only ever be the echoes of our unresolved past.

  ‘And – have you kept on working on the case? On our case?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jericho nodded. ‘Over the past two hours. When you arrived, I was about to phone Madrid.’

  ‘Madrid?’

  ‘An oil company called Repsol.’

  He saw her face light up, so he told her about his research, familiarised her with Loreena’s last email and introduced her to his theories. With every word Hydra slithered further into that dark loft, stretched her necks, fixed her pale yellow eyes on them. In their effort to shake the monster off, they had conjured it up, but something had changed. The monster didn’t come to ambush and chase them, but because they had lured it, and for the first time Jericho felt stronger than the snake. Finally he dialled the number of the Spanish company.

  ‘Of course!’ a man’s voice said in English. ‘Loreena Keowa! I tried to get through to her a number of times. Why does she never answer?’

  ‘She had an accident,’ said Jericho. ‘A fatal accident.’

  ‘How terrible.’ The man paused. When he went on speaking, there was an under-tone of suspicion. ‘And you are—’

  ‘A private detective. I’m trying to continue Miss Keowa’s work and shed some light on the circumstances of her death.’